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Five Toronto beaches closed for E. coli as monitoring group calls on city to clean up ‘major sewage spill’

The city is warning residents to swim at their own risk after tests found high levels of E. coli bacteria at five Toronto beaches.

The city on Friday said beaches at Marie Curtis Park, Sunnyside, Centre Island, Ward’s Island and Cherry Beach were unsafe for swimming after testing samples collected on Thursday, two days after flash flooding overwhelmed parts of the city’s sewer system.

The closure of the beaches, which is not unusual following heavy rainstorms, comes as a water monitoring group is calling on the city to clean up sewage that entered the harbour during the storm.

Swim Drink Fish, which regularly tests water in the harbour, found E. coli levels far exceeding the provincial threshold at three locations in the harbour in tests conducted Thursday. One location, Bathurst Quay found levels greater than 241 times above the accepted standard.

In a letter to the city, Swim Drink Fish said it has found evidence of “a major sewage spill that poses a threat to public and environmental health.”

“We ask that you arrange for cleanup crews to remove the waste, condoms, needles, tampons, and other debris immediately,” the letter reads.

The five beaches closed Friday each registered more than 100 E. coli bacteria per 100 millilitres, the provincial standard for safety, in tests conducted by the city. The highest reported level, at Sunnyside Beach, found 659 E. coli bacteria per 100 millilitres.

“Nobody is more sorry than I am that the beaches ... are presently closed when it’s still summer, or any time for that matter,” said Mayor John Tory. “We’ll just have to continue to do our work on upgrading infrastructure that was allowed to be old-fashioned and unsatisfactory for decades.”

Samples collected on Tuesday, before the storm, found two beaches were listed as being in unswimmable conditions. Last weekend, all the Toronto beaches met the safe swimming standard, according to city data.

The city, which hasn’t said whether increased E. coli levels are a result of sewage overflow during Tuesday’s flooding, warns the public not to swim in Lake Ontario during or after heavy storms and floods.

Six other city beaches remained open Friday. They are Hanlan’s Point and Gibraltar Point beaches on the Islands, Woodbine and Kew Balmy beaches in the Beach neighbourhood, and Bluffer’s Park and Rouge beaches in Scarborough.

On Thursday, the Star joined Swim Drink Fish as it tested water in the harbour and saw a mess of raw sewage and debris.

Modern cities, and some of Toronto’s younger suburbs, are outfitted with separate sewer systems which segregate human waste and storm water, a setup that became standard in the 1950s and ‘60s.

The city of Toronto regularly conducts water monitoring at 11 beaches, but it does not do so at the rest of the waterfront, including in the harbour.

According to Swim Drink Fish, Toronto’s sewers spilled 3.7 million cubic metres of raw sewage into the Lake in 2015 alone.

Tuesday’s rainstorm saw more than 100 millimetres of rain fall over three hours at several locations in Toronto, according to city rain gauges. In at least one location, in North York near Hwy. 401 and the Allan Rd., totals exceeded what would be expected in a 100-year storm.

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The data collected by the city’s gauges may vary from totals tallied by Environment Canada.

In its letter, Swim Drink Fish is also calling on the city to issue public advisories about surface water quality in the harbour for the next 72 hours. “Given the significance of this spill, the existing generic 48-hour rainfall advisory is not sufficient to inform the public about the issue,” the letter reads.

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The group says many people are actively using the water at the harbour, including paddlers, kayakers and surfers.

“We are concerned that water quality issues may persist in the Toronto harbour through the weekend when visits to Harbourfront peak,” the letter reads.

“Visitors should be informed that contact with the water in the Inner Harbour in the next few days exposes them to raw sewage and that precautions can help reduce exposure to bacteria and waterborne illnesses.”

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